Notebook 2: Exploration and Findings

In this notebook we dig into the service requests and see what's in there! In starting this, I had a couple of particular pieces I wanted to look at, but otherwise no particular agenda:

  1. I wanted to see if the number of dog complaints/requests had increased since COVID-19, now that everyone has a COVID dog
  2. I wanted to look into any interesting trends/spikes to see if we could find some related news articles

1. Requests by day

Notice the clear distinction between the request counts between 2013-2015 and 2016-2021. My belief is that this is due to a change in data acquisition rather than an actual uptick in requests. The years 2013-2015 have a very different format, leading me to believe that they come from a different distribution.

... So we see a big difference in input channel for requests. Moving forward, we focus on requests from 2016-present, for (hopefully) more coherent or complete information

1.a What's up with those outliers in early 2019?

... First guess: some sort of manhole theft ring going on in February 2019??? Based on a Global News Article and a CBC News Article, it's actually related to flooded streets!!!

2. Breakdowns by WARD

Random thought - what are the pairwise Bhattacharyya distances between wards?

ie. Which wards are the most "similar" in their request type distributions?

Interesting! Barrhaven and Gloucester-South Nepean are neighbouring suburban neighbourhoods, as are Kanata North and Kanata South, whereas Somerset and West Carleton-March are on nearly complete opposite ends. So this distance does seem to measure some valid differences.

By request type - time trends

Dogs

Was there a spike in dog-related calls since COVID?

... hmmm, there is a spike but that's more at the end of 2019... What's up with that? Let's break down by request type

... Well, that doesn't seem to be covid related.

By Subject

Apparently, bylaw service calls have been up since COVID. What about other subjects?

... Hmmm. It's true that Bylaw requests are up, but they've been increasing year over year since 2016!

By input Channel

How are people making requests?

Random - incomplete musings